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Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

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231–240 of 241 posts

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#231
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is politics, who cares about a few people doing bad stuff... If the shit hits the fan, you want to know the political stance of all the citizens, and who the troublemakers will be, if something large is happening. ...and for that, it's enough to know which political sites they're visiting, even if you don't know the content itself.

The fan was hit Jan 6 and no one in power really cared.

Or, the reason nothing has happened as a result is because nothing serious happened in the "insurrection". I'm suggesting this as a foreigner in a democratic country (a well regarded example country even), a fact I mention to dispel the concept that I'm crypto-republican or even socially (as opposed to fiscally) conservative. I watched 2020 in America through independent videos and through your news, the two of which are very-tenuously connected.

Very few of the capitol-riot criminals (because I totally agree that they committed a bunch of crimes, and are absolutely criminals) were armed, even with the makeshift weapons seen in the previous year's street riots. And they weren't going to hurt anyone because the capitol police and the secret service were preparing the evacuation while Trump was still talking blocks away. Not because they legitimately feared a coup, but because it's just general safety protocol to not sit around and wait for a demonstration or a riot to walk up to you.

Following that you saw the Democrats care as hard as they could. Some are still caring now. But the message didn't resonate with anyone other than their base - it cost them moderate democrat support and hardened moderate republicans again them. They largely stopped because the voters said "It's a non-issue, we don't believe it as told". (I present this as a self-evident fact, despite having seen poles supporting it, because we all know nobody stops beating on an effective drum.)

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#232
post #51

10 years from now cyberterrorism companies with government clearance will be selling machine learning models trained on these logs of previous criminals. Sad.

Maybe then we will have finally got them all and declare the war on terrorism officially over!!

When picking an enemy it's vitally important to pick one who doesn't exist, otherwise you could actually end up finding and eliminating them. Also, to pick one that you can manufacture if and when you actually have to show some results.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#233
post #221
post #40

>The IPAct effectively prohibits ISPs from talking about much of this How very democratic and transparent of them Kinda in two minds about this...tempted to implement a VPN to a VPS but not super keen on killing my gbps speeds.

VPNs just move the problem around, they don't solve it. You've gone from your ISP being the point at which interception can happen to your VPS provider and/or their ISP being the point at which interception can happen.

If you use secure protocols then the VPNs ISP should have no way of linking your good with your bad browsing, whereas your ISP sees where the cable is running from and can link everything you view (as far as the IP or hostname at any rate.)

But yeah, you're swapping your ISP and your government for your VPN and maybe their government.

If you're a dissident, you're probably fine. If you're a pirate and the VPN isn't in certain countries, you're probably fine. If it's something both countries disagree with, you're in trouble.

Know your personal risks.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? For TLS connections that is all the information available.

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/usa/clipper.htm It's not like governments haven't tried to backdoor computing devices via the legal route before.

Also, they have the IP the "anonymous users" are connecting to. They know who to go lean on to get the logs.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Trivial to bypass: Check 2. Further degrades the privacy of the general public: Check Just another day in internet legislation.

This often makes me think, what would happen if the authorities suddenly instituted something that actually wasn't trivial to bypass? There are smart people working for them, why do they keep bringing in this stuff that doesn't actually have an effect against the baddies? Is it possible that they are self-sabotaging because they actually realize they don't want to live in the world they are rushing headlong towards?…

The idea that the powers aren't actually useful is a completely false meme that techies tell each other because they imagine criminals to behave in a particular way, which is incorrect.

Police powers are routinely shown to be useful in actual criminal investigations.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#237
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, i think the mentality here is that the government is spying for you, not at you. Is it different in the us? And is that because all revelations revolve around the fact that citizens are being spied on?

Then why do people light british spy cameras on fire so often?

counter spies?

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#238
post #127

This seems simultaneously too intrusive, and yet not intrusive enough to actually benefit law enforcement. They are logging source and destination IPs. But to what end? What can that possibly prove? Surely the vast majority of crime occurs at the application level.

This is coupled with extensive logging of DNS queries.

If you connect to IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx a few milliseconds after looking up the IP for badsite.com then you're probably connecting to badsite.com. Then they can get a warrant for badsite.com's web server logs, or cloudflares logs if badsite.com is using it...

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are apathetic and ill-informed. It is far easier and more enjoyable to believe that Britain is peace- and freedom-loving, which is the continual message from the tabloids, than to keep track of these developments and their implications.

If so, why were they not apathetic and ill-informed a mere then, not even 100 years ago? Certainly people of the time thought Britain was peace- and freedom- loving then, too.

Complexity. A policeman taking a literal print of your body is far simpler and more direct than "big data" and so on.

Remember that most computer users are hazy at best about whether `natwest.my-account.co.uk` is a phishing scam. There isn't the necessary baseline of informed opinion to have a reasonable discussion about this kind of snooping.

Re: Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any recommendations for VPN providers?

This one's frequently suggested: https://mullvad.net/en/ You can pay by cash or cryptocurrencies, you don't need to provide them with your email address, headquartered in the EU, Mozilla's VPN is a partnership with them, open source clients with reproducible builds, WireGuard support.

Just to catch up, thank you, I used mullvad and been happy. Connecting to Germany or Netherlands is no problem for speed.
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